NARRATOR: Alexander Calder called this work Object with Red Discs. That’s a minimal, bare-bones title. Yet when New York designer Karim Rashid looks at it, he sees something spiritual.

KARIMRASHID: The first impression I receive when I look at Object with Red Discs is a feeling of universality. The work is a discussion of the cosmos.

NARRATOR: First, look at the base of the sculpture: you can see it takes the shape of a pyramid.

KARIMRASHID: The pyramid is one of the strongest forms that exists in the sense of spiritualism. The heavy weight of the ball that’s centered between a pyramid obviously is very spiritual, and alludes to icons of spirituality, the perfect sphere which represents in a sense in the abstraction of art the soul, and once again, the whole, kind of a holistic idea about humanity.

NARRATOR: Notice how the smaller discs higher up seem to be floating in space.

KARIMRASHID: That every sphere is different also speaks about our larger cosmos, of the relationship of different size planets and stars and universes. And the piece, the nature of it—as in most of Calder’s work—is a feeling of pleasure and a feeling of uplifted, elevated experience.